' Anger sat there, uneasy/&too easy-even/their parents hated us, claimed/to have forgotten our trophies.'Īnd about lessons imparted by a rigorous history teacher, even as it was obvious the man was dying: 'the hatless holy who pin lace/to their hair-bowing/down into pocketbooks/opened for the Lord.'Īnd about the time his youth baseball team beat the odds by winning the finals they tempered their celebration in the face of the losing team - and their parents: He writes about his church and parishioners: Young calls them 'Home Recordings' and 'Field Recordings.' Home Recordings paints vivid pictures of Young's early life in Kansas. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Brown and Linda Brown and all that that implied, but also James Brown and John Brown.' And the brown kids on his baseball team, and the brown waiter who defied white men in Mississippi to tell the truth about his segregated life.Ĭlose overlay Buy Featured Book Title Brown Subtitle Poems Author Kevin Young 'I was really interested in this idea of brownness,' Young explains, 'both in sort of a literal name, like Brown in Brown v. Young's new book, Brown, is colored by memories like that, from his family and childhood, United States history and black culture. Brown's tenure, he was around to hear Linda Brown Thompson, the little girl on whose behalf her father brought suit to desegregate the whites-only school near her home, play the piano. 'And if you were late-I'm not saying I was ever late,' he deadpans, 'you got to wait there for a little while until it was time to come in and take your pew.'Īnd while Young missed Rev. 'His picture was there in the antechamber,' Young remembers. Brown was before Young's time, but he was still a felt presence. Oliver Brown, of Brown v Board of Education fame. Mark's African Methodist Episcopal Church was the Rev.

Some people read about history poet Kevin Young actually saw an important part of history each week, when he went to his family's church in Topeka, Kan. Kevin Young's 2012 essay collection The Grey Album: On The Blackness Of Blackness was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Brown poems kevin young